[Lowfer] An excellent way to top off the year.

[Bryce Ofstie]

What a year.  I figure I received reception reports from about
19 different listeners.  I usually hear from 5 or 6.  Most came
in this last week and then to end it all with LF straight key 
night with Roger and Lyle made it a very good year of Longwave
experimenting.

A couple of days ago I brought the LF Transmitter in the house
for a few hours of maintenance and cured the phase modulation
problems.  The sidebands are gone.  I found a 12 volt regulator
failing under load.  The transmitter draws more and less current
with every 1.6 seconds (probably part of the divide by circuits).
The 12 volts out to the transmitter looked like a 3.2 second long
square wave, 8 volts low and 11.5 volts high.  On the transitions
the phase lock loop (4046) would momentarily loose lock.  I
replace the regulator and problem solved.  Steve sent a screen
save from 1435 miles away and the sidebands were clearly
visible on either side of the carrier.  I wonder if the openings
to Alaska and the LF propagation to Steve are related.  Thanks
everyone who pointed out the sidebands, I would have assumed
they were caused by receiver overload at my end otherwise.
Looking at Larry's latest screen save I have to believe the
problem has been corrected and now all the energy should be
in the carrier where it belongs.

Happy New Year and Good listening,
Bryce


-- 
Bryce R Ofstie, KI0LE
LF Beacon BRO - 182.200 kHz
Duluth, Minnesota   EN36us

http://cp.duluth.mn.us/~ki0le/